Companies typically have difficulties tracking inventory items or objects and their usage within their facilities. Many inventory items are misused, misplaced, and improperly tracked and replenished by the employees of the companies. In some industries, misplaced items can lead to serious mishaps. For instance, in the aerospace industry, a wrench or other tool left behind in the maintenance or construction of an aircraft engine can result in the catastrophic failure of an engine valued at hundreds of thousands of dollars, or even worse if undetected before operation.
Various safeguards have been established in the aerospace industry to prevent such mishaps, such as foreign object detection or FOD. FOD requires procedures that monitor the location of any object that can fall into (or otherwise be mistakenly left in) an aircraft or aircraft component. In a typical aerospace manufacturing environment, such procedures may result in one or more inspection personnel providing inspections of tool cabinets and tool drawers (herein, such tool cabinets and drawers collectively or individually referred to generally as enclosures).
Shadowboxing may also be implemented in accord with such procedures. Shadowboxing refers to an outline of indirect material (e.g., objects such as wrenches, gauges, safety glasses, tools, pencils, etc.) in or on surfaces located within enclosures. The outline (or shadowbox) may be further distinguished from the surrounding surfaces by possessing a different color, different material, and/or different topology (e.g., such as a recess in a particular material).
In some embodiments, other methods to provide distinction may be used (e.g., pegs or protrusions providing an outline of an object) alone or in combination with the aforementioned distinguishing features. When an object does not reside in the shadowbox, the outline provides an immediate visual indication to inspection personnel that the object is missing, and thus other procedures are invoked to track the missing object to prevent possible damage to equipment or harm to personnel. In a given manufacturing environment, the quantity of such enclosures that are to be checked one or more times throughout the day can consume a considerable amount of man-hours.